


Side By Side, Rising Tides

by Tridraconeus



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Arcane Bond, Death, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Mercy Kill, Plague, Rat Plague | The Doom of Pandyssia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-03-11 20:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13532151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus
Summary: He sits with them, sometimes, when the Plague takes hold.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Surface to Air](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JevwCB5sTEc) by Django Django! The original working title was _in by the damp,_ but I changed it for aesthetics. Poor Julian lol

Moving his men to the waterlogged Chamber of Commerce is not one of the best ideas that Daud has ever had, but the husk of a building provides many things that previous hideouts lacked. It has more room to train, a private office, separated rooms for bunks and a hastily-made mess hall, and the surrounding area is easier to patrol and upkeep.

It also lacks many things that the other hideouts provided, such as consistently dry bedding, or a roof. 

It is isolated and solemn, perfect for his intentions. 

It cannot keep away the Plague.

+

He sits with them, sometimes, when the Plague takes hold. Those of them with the strongest Bonds don't get it at all; some only feel it in the beginning, the headaches and cough, before the black magic in them dispels the sickness. Ones with weak Bonds, or those to which it doesn't take, are hit the hardest, and when the Plague strikes Daud loses a dozen. Those deaths are quick. Used to hiding pain and weakness, their comrades had no choice but to shoot them when they started to Weep. 

The rest of the deaths sneak and creep, clawing up out of the still water in the Flooded District and reaching into his men. After the initial rash of Plague the deaths slow.

Elixir runs thin.

Plague replaces it. 

+

He loses Pavel, whose light fingers cannot steal more time for himself. Daud sits with him for an hour. Of all his Novices, he would not have guessed that Pavel would fall ill. He's loyal. The Bond simply didn't take for some, though. 

He carefully doses out what is nearly too much sleep toxin. He doubles it. When Pavel falls to a restless, agonized doze, he puts him to sleep and leaves the body for Julian. He won't watch the burial, but knows that there will be one, however brief and brutal as their burials must be. 

He loses Fisher. The rest of Daud's handpicked Master assassins seem to be safe; Fisher, who watches the Novices and teaches them closely alongside Rulfio and Daniel, had not been promoted due to the strength of his Bond but because of his skill with a blade, of scrapping with his fists and feet, and his fierce loyalty that couldn't be stronger even with black magic to reinforce it. Daud didn't know where he came from until the Bond formed; then, it was nothing but dirty alleys and the blows of people much older and larger than him. 

When Fisher's condition takes a turn for the worse Daud takes him out by the Refinery. They look out to sea for a moment. Fisher's breath comes like he's breathing through the ocean pebbles, blood bubbling in his throat, and he knows; he whispers _please, Master_ , and holds still for Daud to shoot him through the temple with his wristbow. 

He loses Anatole, a former mercenary and bandit from Tyvia. Daud-- who is familiar with the Tyvian tendency to meet death with dignity-- is surprised when Anatole starts to cough, but not surprised when he severs the Bond of his own volition. He leaves his uniform, his wristbow, his bolts on his bunk and departs during the early morning for a secluded part of the Flooded District.

Daud does not rule it a desertion. He rules it a death in action and sends Marco to ensure as such. 

He loses Cleon, who came to him searching refuge from a certain future in a brothel. Cleon's hair is dull and flat to her skull with sweat when he comes to the infirmary. Blood traverses the ridge of her cheekbones; she's lost twenty pounds in two weeks. Julian is sitting in the far chair, head in his hands. He thought she would pull through, as did Daud. As appealing and simple as the solution seems he does not put her to sleep as he did Pavel; she wakes to tell him that she will not falter. Blood clings to her lips and through the antiseptic sting of the infirmary Daud smells the sourness of death clinging to her, hovering like a thundercloud. Still, she insists. Julian smiles. When he talks to Daud, he mentions hemlock tea. Her Bond breaks later that evening. It gutters out like a flame denied breath. He has to redo an entire page of numbers. His hand has trailed and left splotches of ink all over the paper. 

He loses Brendan. Like Cleon, he fights it with the ferocity of a cornered wildcat, as if claws and teeth can keep away an enemy that comes from within. The Bond snaps like yarn in the middle of the night and Daud feels as if his own magic has frayed, somehow. Julian's Bond wavers, thins, and when Daud searchingly taps into it there is nothing but drowning and choking despair. In the infirmary, he has been sitting with his head in his hands for hours. He is exhausted, but he cannot sleep. Those who the Plague touches die before they start to weep; Daud suspects that Julian has been doing enough weeping for all of them. 

He almost loses Domenico, who is thirteen when the Plague reaches into him. Daud has refused the Bond thus far, allowing Domenico to be trained with the others but mostly relegating him to the Chamber where it was safe; running messages, preparing packs for the Whalers going on assignments. He looks so small on the cot when Daud comes to pass judgement. He coughs so hard that his chest lifts from the ratty mattress, nearly as hard as to crack ribs. There's blood on his mouth, but not from his eyes, when Daud offers the Bond. 

It will either save him or send him off with something close to happiness and Domenico accepts without a thought. Within a week he recovers fully. Daud doesn't know the exact requirements for the Bond to erase a person's memory and doesn't know if there are, in fact, requirements at all. It could be totally random. Domenico, when he recovers, cannot remember anything except Daud and the Flooded District. 

It's a start, which is better than what Daud allowed himself to expect. Daud permits him to go on missions shortly after he turns fourteen. He first kills someone when he turns fifteen. It will be all he ever knows. The sharp edge of a knife. Plague, and the city rotting from the inside out.  


	2. Take My Hand, Shifting Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Side By Side, Rising Tide through the eyes of another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I even write stuff for MY minor characters now.  
> One day I will write something nice for Jessamine. I feel bad for writing so much about Whalers and stuff and disregarding Corvo and crew.  
> Unbetaed. Any mistakes are mine; tell me and I'll fix them.

Until Daud amassed a handful of people who knew how to handle children he hadn't recruited any. 

Julian was one of them, and one of the first; the others he kept a brotherly eye on. Fisher tolerated children, if not liked them, but he liked teaching more than that and so he quickly rose to a place of authority in commanding them. 

Daniel was eighteen. He was joined quickly enough by Rulfio, older than him and responsible for a scar marring his side. Then Daud must have felt more comfortable recruiting half-starved orphans and scrappy little mudlarks, because Julian started spending just as much time bandaging up sprained ankles and treating children's fevers as he did fixing bullet wounds. 

It is the children that the Plague takes first-- not the young ones, safe in the Chamber, but the children running towards adulthood. 

Plague descends and sweeps away those who are weak or disloyal. Julian had expected Daud to be pleased. The man is strikingly pragmatic-- had to be, to lead and train a cadre of killers-- and there is no room for traitors in the tight ship that is the Chamber of Commerce, floating atop the murky ocean intrusion of the Flooded District. 

The greatest issue that arises is that those who are loyal and to who the Bond didn't take stumble, falter, and eventually get swept under. Pavel is one of those consigned to drowning. 

Julian expects Daud to order him killed or sent out so he wouldn't contaminate the others. Instead, he is permitted to cough and wither away inside the infirmary for a week and a half until he is barely a shadow of his former self. Thinner than how he was when he joined. Julian is, by now, immune to most of the illnesses that can seize a man, but he still feels sick to his stomach.

What Julian doesn't expect is for Daud to transverse into the infirmary in the early morning. Fog laps at the windows and it is cold inside and outside. Pavel, shaking and fevered, likely can't feel the chill. Daud doesn't talk to him but the question is evident in the tightness of his mouth and the hooding of his eyes. Lacking any answer that he wants to verbalize, Julian can only shake his head. 

It is worse, he thinks, because Pavel is-- he's not very old at all, and he practically worships the ground Daud walks on. When Daud pulls out a book from his breast and sits in the chair at Pavel's bedside, Julian transverses away and trusts that Daud will come get him if something happens. 

Something does happen but Daud doesn't inform him. He leaves the body. Julian doesn't know whether he would be more grateful for Daud telling him, or allowing him to find the body curled up-- peaceful in a sleep Pavel hadn't had for a week and a half-- and motionless as he did. Pavel's uniform is contaminated; it is burned. Pavel is burned, also, outside and in the area that is laid bare when the tide goes out. 

There's only one Master assassin that chooses to walk anywhere. Julian has no fear of the Plague and so he allows Fisher to crawl into an empty bunk in the infirmary and shiver, shake, complaining of cold even when Julian feels his forehead and briefly thinks that he's burned himself. It's the early stages but Fisher himself knows that there is no recourse once the Plague's come. He's up to his neck. Nobody has any desire to see him choke.

Julian is glad that Daud is so pragmatic. It is one thing to kill an enemy; it is another to kill a comrade. There is no body this time and for that Julian is pathetically grateful. 

Anatole is an outlier among the miserable shadows that slink to him for help and meager comfort. He comes to the infirmary and speaks with Julian for an hour. With the mask, Julian cannot see the blood. He merely thinks that Anatole's come back from a taxing mission. He doesn't allow himself to think anything further than that, which is pitiful and pathetic. 

Marco stumbles into the infirmary the next morning and asks, in a ragged voice, for some laudanum. Blood speckles his front. Julian obligingly measures out a small dosage and sets Marco to sleep on one of the infirmary cots. Marco's face slackens in sleep but he grips the edge of the cot so hard his knuckles are white. Julian rearranges pyramidal jars of cleaning salts and tries not to look. His chest constricts. His throat is dry. The Bond on the back of his hand aches, a pernicious reminder that this will not be the last. 

Cleon is brought to the infirmary for fever. Julian gives her tea and puts her to sleep in one of the cots closest to a window. He hopes it is just a sickness brought in by the damp, the mold, something she could cough out and sleep off and walk away from. She keeps coughing. She coughs blood. Blood oozes from her eyes and speckles her cheekbones. As she shrinks into the cot, she tells him she will pull through. Julian replies yes, of course she will, even as he feels his chest constrict. She's already been in the infirmary for a week and a half by the time Daud visits. He knows by then that she will not _pull through_. Daud talks to him but he barely understands it, hears it more as the crying of gulls on the harbor than as words. He gives her hemlock tea. She sits up against the wall and breathes in the steam. Her eyes droop half-shut with the warmth. He sits with her until she stops breathing. 

Julian hasn't let himself feel emotion in a raw and unrestrained fashion for years. He's spent so much time hidden behind a mask that he's learned to mute and muzzy himself as to better carry out Daud's will. It is as if every suppressed emotion comes baying at the heels of Cleon's death. Julian has not cried for years. He takes a bottle of whiskey, holes up in the tiny office that is his own, and does not cry but imagines that soon he will. 

Brendan comes to him crying. Brendan is sixteen, the son of a whaler lost at sea and a seamstress murdered by a jealous employee, the brother of a whore and a gang member. Brendan is tough and merciless; Brendan shoves his face into a threadbare pillow and cries. He does not flee and wait for retribution. He does not ask for hemlock to expedite the process. Julian hopes and prays to whatever might be listening that Brendan will survive. Brendan deteriorates instead, face growing sallow and ribs pressing against his chest again. He coughs so hard that his face contorts in agony. He coughs, twists and turns in his cot. Julian takes to waiting in the infirmary with his head in his hands, moving only when someone needs a bandage or some antivenin. Brendan finally asks for his blade. Julian can't do anything except give it to him and guide him out of the infirmary and to the courtyard outside, arm under one of his and at his back to steady him. 

Domenico is brought in by Galia, who looks stony-faced and resigned to the whole deal. Julian is pitifully relieved that she's numb to it; he isn't. It still feels like a yawning wound. She spares a sympathetic hand on his shoulder before she transverses out of the infirmary. Julian puts Domenico to sleep in one of the cots and sets to making a serum to suppress his coughing. When it stops working, they all will know it's too late. 

Julian doesn't have high hopes no matter how hard he tries to. Daud transverses in about the same time the serum loses effectiveness; Julian can't even look up at him. Daud puts a hand on his shoulder as he passes. Julian scrubs at his face with his hands and stares at the ground. He knows he is impervious to the Plague by now, but he still feels as if he is rotting from the inside out. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments & Kudos appreciated! I need validation to live

**Author's Note:**

> Comments & Kudos make my day! Please share your thoughts with me!


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